Chapter 16

Authorities.—For sources see U. Chevalier,Répertoire des sources historiques du moyen-âge(Paris, 1903); A. Potthast,Bibliotheca historica medii aevi(Berlin, 1896); W. Wattenbach,Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter(7th ed., Stuttgart, 1904); A. Molinier,Les Sources de l’histoire de la France(Paris, 1901). General Treatises: Philip Schaff,History of the Christian Church(12 yols., 5th ed., New York, 1889-1892), vol. iv.Medieval Christianity; W. Moeller,Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte, vol. ii.Das Mittelalter(Freiburg, 1891); H.H. Milman,History of Latin Christianity(6 vols., 2nd ed., London, 1857). Particular Treatises: J. Lingard,The History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church(2 vols. 3rd ed., London, 1845); E. Churton,The Early English Church(London, 1878); A. Martineau,Church History in England from the Earliest Times to the Reformation(London, 1878); W. Hunt,The English Church from its Foundation to the Norman Conquest(London, 1899); W. Stubbs,Constitutional History of England(3 vols., London, 1874-1878); A. Bellesheim,Geschichte der kathol. Kirche in Schottland(2 vols., Mainz, 1883; Engl. transl. with Notes and Additions by O.H. Blair, 4 vols., Edinburgh, 1887-1890); W. Stephen,History of the Scottish Church(Edinburgh, 1894-1896, 2 vols.); W.D. Killen,The Ecclesiastical History of Ireland(2 vols., London, 1875-1878); A. Bellesheim,Geschichte der kath. Kirche in Irland(3 vols., Mainz, 1890-1891); F. Rettberg,Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands(2 vols. Göttingen, 1846, 1848); A. Hauck,Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands(4 vols., Leipzig, 3rd ed., 1904);Gallia Christiana in provincias eccl. distributa(16 and 3 vols., Paris, 1715-1900); F.N. Fager,Histoire de l’église cathol. en France depuis son origine(19 vols., Paris, 1862-1873); Ughelli,Italia sacra(10 vols., Venice, 1717-1722); P. Gams,Kirchengeschichte von Spanien(5 vols., Regensburg, 1862-1879); H. Reuterdahl,Svenska Kyrkans historia(3 vols., Lund, 1838-1863); A. v. Maurer,Die Bekehrung des norwegischen Stammes(2 vols., Munich, 1855-1856); Bang,Udsigt over den norske Kirkes historie under Katholicismen(Christiania, 1887); P. Gams,Series episcoporum ecclesiae catholicae(Regensburg, 1873); C. Eubel,Hierarchia catholica medii aevi(2 vols., Münster, 1898, 1901); P. Hinschius,System des kath. Kirchenrechts(6 vols., Berlin, 1869-1896); E. Friedberg,Lehrbuch des Kirchenrechts(5th ed., Leipzig, 1903); U. Stutz, “Kirchenrecht” (Holtzendorff-Kohler,Encyklopaedie der Rechtswissenschaft, 6th ed. II. Leipzig, 1904); B. Hauréau,Histoire de la philosophie scolastique(Paris, 1872); F. Schwane,Dogmengeschichte der mittleren Zeit(Freiburg, 1882); A. Ebert,Allgem. Geschichte der Literatur des Mittelalters im Abendlande(3 vols., Leipzig, 1874-1887); C.F. v. Hefele,Conciliengeschichte(2nd ed., 9 vols., Freiburg, 1873-1890).

(A. H.*)

C. The Modern Church

The issue in 1564 of the canons of the council of Trent marks a very definite epoch in the history of the Christian Church. Up till that time, in spite of the schism of East and West and of innumerable heresies, the idea of the Church as Catholic, not only in its faith but in its organization, had been generally accepted. From this conception the Reformers had, at the outset, no intention of departing. Their object had been to purify the Church of medieval accretions, and to restore the primitive model in the light of the new learning; the idea of rival “churches,” differing in their fundamental doctrines and in their principles of organization, existing side by side, was as abhorrent to them as to the most rigid partisan of Roman centralization. The actual divisions of Western Christendom are the outcome, less of the purely religious influences of the Reformation period than of the political forces with which they were associated and confused. When it became clear that the idea of doctrinal change would find no acceptance at Rome, the Reformers appealed to the divine authority of the civil power against that of the popes; and princes within their several states succeeded, as the result of purely political struggles and combinations, in establishing the form of religion best suited to their convictions or their policy. Thus over a great part of Europe the Catholic Church was split up into territorial or national churches, which, whatever the theoretical ties which bound them together, were in fact separate organizations, tending ever more and more to become isolated and self-contained units with no formal intercommunion, and, as the rivalry of nationalities grew, with increasingly little even of intercommunication.

It was not, indeed, till the settlement of Westphalia in 1648, after the Thirty Years’ War, that this territorial division of Christendom became stereotyped, but the process had been going on for a hundred years previously; in some states, as in England and Scotland, it had long been completed; in others, as in South Germany, Bohemia and Poland, it was defeated by the political and missionary efforts of the Jesuits and other agents of the counter-Reformation. In any case, it received a vast impetus from the action of the council of Trent. With the issue of the Tridentine canons, all hope even of compromise between the “new” and the “old” religions was definitely closed. The anathema of the Roman Church had fallen upon all the fundamental doctrines for which the Reformers had contended and died; the right of free discussion within the limits of the creeds, which had given room for the speculations of the medieval philosophers, was henceforth curtailed and confined; and the definitions of the schoolmen were for ever exalted by the authority of Rome into dogmas of the Church. The Latin Church, which, by combining the tradition of the Roman centralized organization with a great elasticity in practice and in the interpretation of doctrine, had hitherto been the moulding force of civilization in the West, is henceforth more or less in antagonism to that civilization, which advances in all its branches—in science, in literature, in art—to a greater or less degree outside of and in spite of her, until in its ultimate and most characteristic developments it falls under the formal condemnation of the pope, formulated in the famous Syllabus of 1864. Considered from the standpoint of the world outside, the Roman Church is, no less than the Protestant communities, merely one of the sects into which Western Christendom has been divided—the most important and widespread, it is true, but playing in the general life and thought of the world a part immeasurably less important than that filled by the Church before the Reformation, and one in no sense justifying her claim to be considered as the sole inheritor of the tradition of the pre-Reformation Church.

If this be true of the Roman Catholic Church, it is still more so of the other great communities and confessions which emerged from the controversies of the Reformation. Of these the Anglican Church held most closely to the tradition of Catholic organization; but she has never made any higher claim than to be one of “the three branches of the Catholic Church,” a claim repudiated by Rome and never formally admitted by the Church of the East. The Protestant churches established on the continent, even where—as in the case of the Lutherans—they approximate more closely than the official Anglican Church to Roman doctrine and practice, make no such claim. The Bible is for them the real source of authority in doctrine; their organization is part and parcel of that of the state. They are, in fact, the state in its religious aspect, and as such are territorial or national, not Catholic. This tendency has been common in the East also, where with the growth of racial rivalries the Orthodox Church has split into a series of national churches, holding the same faith but independent as to organization.

A yet further development, of comparatively recent growth, has been the formation of what are now commonly called inEngland the “free churches.” These represent a theory of the Church practically unknown to the Reformers, and only reached through the necessity for discovering a logical basis for the communities of conscientious dissidents from the established churches. According to this the Catholic Church is not a visibly organized body, but the sum of all “faithful people” throughout the world, who group themselves in churches modelled according to their convictions or needs. For the organization of these churches no divine sanction is claimed, though all are theoretically modelled on the lines laid down in the Christian Scriptures. It follows that, while in the traditional Church, with its claim to an unbroken descent from a divine original, the individual is subordinate to the Church, in the “free churches” the Church is in a certain sense secondary to the individual. The believer may pass from one community to another without imperilling his spiritual life, or even establish a new church without necessarily incurring the reproach of schism. From this theory, powerful in Great Britain and her colonies, supreme in the United States of America, has resulted an enormous multiplication of sects.

It follows from the above argument that, from the period of the Reformation onward, no historical account of the Christian Church as a whole, and considered as a definite institution, is possible. The stream of continuity has been broken, and divides into innumerable channels. The only possible synthesis is that of the Christianity common to all; as institutions, though they possess many features in common, their history is separate and must be separately dealt with. The history of the various branches of the Christian Church since the Reformation will therefore be found under their several titles (seeRoman Catholic Church;England, Church of;Presbyterianism;Baptists, &c, &c.).

(W. A. P.)

1Upon the spread of the Church during the early centuries see especially Harnack’sMission und Ausbreitung des Christenthums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten. An interesting parallel to the spread of Christianity in the Roman empire is afforded by the contemporary Mithraism. See Cumont’sLes Mystères de Mithra(1900), Eng. tr.The Mysteries of Mithra(1903).

CHURCHILL, CHARLES(1731-1764), English poet and satirist, was born in Vine Street, Westminster, in February 1731. His father, rector of Rainham, Essex, held the curacy and lectureship of St John’s, Westminster, from 1733, and the son was educated at Westminster school, where he became a good classical scholar, and formed a close and lasting intimacy with Robert Lloyd. Churchill was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1749, but never resided. He had been refused at Oxford, ostensibly on the unlikely ground of lack of classical knowledge, but more probably because of a hasty marriage which he had contracted within the rules of the Fleet in his eighteenth year. He and his wife lived in his father’s house, and Churchill was afterwards sent to the north of England to prepare for holy orders. He became curate of South Cadbury, Somersetshire, and, on receiving priest’s orders (1756), began to act as his father’s curate at Rainham. Two years later the elder Churchill died, and the son was elected to succeed him in his curacy and lectureship. His emoluments amounted to less than £100 a year, and he increased his income by teaching in a girls’ school. He fulfilled his various duties with decorum for a while, but his marriage proved unfortunate, and he spent much of his time in dissipation in the society of Robert Lloyd. He was separated from his wife in 1761, and would have been imprisoned for debt but for the timely help of Lloyd’s father, who had been an usher and was now a master of Westminster school.

Churchill had already done some work for the booksellers, and his friend Lloyd had had some success with a didactic poem, “The Actor.” His intimate knowledge of the theatre was now turned to account in theRosciad, which appeared in March 1761. This reckless and amusing satire described with the most disconcerting accuracy the faults of the various actors and actresses on the London stage. Its immediate popularity was no doubt largely due to its personal character, but its real vigour and raciness make it worth reading even now when the objects of Churchill’s wit are many of them forgotten. The first impression was published anonymously, and in theCritical Review, conducted by Tobias Smollett, it was confidently asserted that the poem was the joint production of George Colman, Bonnell Thornton and Robert Lloyd. Churchill owned the authorship and immediately published anApology addressed to the Critical Reviewers, which, after developing the subject that it is only the caste of authors that prey on their own kind, repeats the fierce attack on the stage. Incidentally it contains an enthusiastic tribute to Dryden, of whom Churchill was a not unworthy scholar. In theRosciadhe had given warm praise to Mrs Pritchard, Mrs Cibber and Mrs Clive, but no leading London actor, with the exception of David Garrick, had escaped censure, and in theApologyGarrick was clearly threatened. He deprecated criticism by showing every possible civility to Churchill, who became a terror to the actors. Thomas Davies wrote to Garrick attributing his blundering in the part of Cymbeline “to my accidentally seeing Mr Churchill in the pit, it rendering me confused and unmindful of my business.” Churchill’s satire made him many enemies, and inquiries into his way of life provided abundant matter for retort. InNight, an Epistle to Robert Lloyd(1761), he answered the attacks made on him, offering by way of defence the argument that any faults were better than hypocrisy. His scandalous conduct brought down the censure of the dean of Westminster, and in 1763 the protests of his parishioners led him to resign his offices, and he was free to wear his “blue coat with metal buttons” and much gold lace without remonstrance from the dean. TheRosciadhad been refused by several publishers, and was finally published at Churchill’s own expense. He received a considerable sum from the sale, and paid his old creditors in full, besides making an allowance to his wife.

He now became a close ally of John Wilkes, whom he regularly assisted with theNorth Briton.The Prophecy of Famine: A Scots Pastoral(1763), his next poem, was founded on a paper written originally for that journal. This violent satire on Scottish influence fell in with the current hatred of Lord Bute, and the Scottish place-hunters were as much alarmed as the actors had been. When Wilkes was arrested he gave Churchill a timely hint to retire to the country for a time, the publisher, Kearsley, having stated that he received part of the profits from the paper. HisEpistle to William Hogarth(1763) was in answer to the caricature of Wilkes made during the trial. In it Hogarth’s vanity and envy were attacked in an invective which Garrick quoted as “shocking and barbarous.” Hogarth retaliated by a caricature of Churchill as a bear in torn clerical bands hugging a pot of porter and a club made of lies andNorth Britons.The Duellist(1763) is a virulent satire on the most active opponents of Wilkes in the House of Lords, especially on Bishop Warburton. He attacked Dr Johnson among others inThe Ghostas “Pomposo, insolent and loud, Vain idol of a scribbling crowd.” Other poems are “The Conference” (1763); “The Author” (1763), highly praised by Churchill’s contemporaries; “Gotham” (1764), a poem on the duties of a king, didactic rather than satiric in tone; “The Candidate” (1764), a satire on John Montagu, fourth earl of Sandwich, one of Wilkes’s bitterest enemies, whom he had already denounced for his treachery in theDuellist(Bk. iii.) as “too infamous to have a friend”; “The Farewell” (1764); “The Times” (1764); “Independence,” and an unfinished “Journey.”

In October 1764 he went to Boulogne to join Wilkes. There he was attacked by a fever of which he died on the 4th of November. He left his property to his two sons, and made Wilkes his literary executor with full powers. Wilkes did little. He wrote an epitaph for his friend and about half a dozen notes on his poems, and Andrew Kippis acknowledges some slight assistance from him in preparing his life of Churchill for theBiographia Britannica(1780). There is more than one instance of Churchill’s generosity to his friends. In 1763 he found his friend Robert Lloyd in prison for debt. He paid a guinea a week for his better maintenance in the Fleet, and raised a subscription to set him free. Lloyd fell ill on receipt of the news of Churchill’s death, and died shortly afterwards. Churchill’s sister Patty, who was engaged to Lloyd, did not long survive them. William Cowper was his schoolfellow, and left many kindly references to him.

A partial collection of Churchill’s poems appeared in 1763. They are included in Chalmers’s edition of the English poets, and were edited (1804) by W. Tooke. This was reprinted in the Aldine edition (1844). There is a revised edition (1892) in the same series,The Poetical Works of Charles Churchill, with a Memoir by J.L. Hannay and copious notes by W. Tooke. For Churchill’s biography,seeGenuine Memoirs of Charles Churchill, with an account of and observations on his writings; together with some Original letters ... between him and the author(1765); A. Kippis, inBiographia Britannica(1780); also John Forster in theEdinburgh Review(January 1845).

CHURCHILL, LORD RANDOLPH HENRY SPENCER(1840-1895), English statesman, third son of John, seventh duke of Marlborough, by Frances, daughter of the third marquess of Londonderry, was born at Blenheim Palace, on the 13th of February 1849. His early education was conducted at home, and at Mr Tabor’s preparatory school at Cheam. In January 1863 he went to Eton, where he remained till July 1865. He was not specially distinguished either in school work or games while at Eton; his contemporaries describe him as a vivacious and rather unruly lad. In October 1867 he matriculated at Merton College, Oxford. He was fond of amusement, and had carried to Oxford an early taste for sport which he retained throughout life. But he read with some industry, and obtained a second class in jurisprudence and modern history in 1870. In 1874 he was elected to parliament in the Conservative interest for Woodstock, defeating Mr George Brodrick, a fellow, and afterwards warden, of Merton College. His maiden speech, delivered in his first session, made no impression on the House.

It was not till 1878 that he forced himself into public notice as the exponent of a species of independent Conservatism. He directed a series of furious attacks against some of the occupants of the front ministerial bench, and especially that “old gang” who were distinguished rather for the respectability of their private characters, and the unblemished purity of their Toryism, than for striking talent. Mr Sclater-Booth (afterwards 1st Lord Basing), president of the Local Government Board, was the especial object of his ire, and that minister’s County Government Bill was fiercely denounced as the “crowning dishonour to Tory principles,” and the “supreme violation of political honesty.” The audacity of Lord Randolph’s attitude, and the vituperative fluency of his invective, made him a parliamentary figure of some importance before the dissolution of the 1874 parliament, though he was not as yet taken quite seriously. In the new parliament of 1880 he speedily began to play a more notable rôle. With the assistance of his devoted adherents, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, Sir John Gorst and occasionally of Mr Arthur Balfour, and one or two others, he constituted himself at once the audacious opponent of the Liberal administration and the unsparing critic of the Conservative front bench. The “fourth party,” as it was nicknamed, was effective at first not so much in damaging the government as in awakening the opposition from the apathy which had fallen upon it after its defeat at the polls. Churchill roused the Conservatives and gave them a fighting issue, by putting himself at the head of the resistance to Mr Bradlaugh, the member for Northampton, who, though an avowed atheist or agnostic, was prepared to take the parliamentary oath. Sir Stafford Northcote, the Conservative leader in the Lower House, was forced to take a strong line on this difficult question by the energy of the fourth party, who in this case clearly expressed the views of the bulk of the opposition. The long and acrimonious controversy over Mr Bradlaugh’s seat, if it added little to the reputation of the English legislature, at least showed that Lord Randolph Churchill was a parliamentary champion who added to his audacity much tactical skill and shrewdness. He continued to play a conspicuous part throughout the parliament of 1880-1885, dealing his blows with almost equal vigour at Mr Gladstone and at the Conservative front bench, some of whose members, and particularly Sir Richard Cross and Mr W.H. Smith, he assailed with extreme virulence. From the beginning of the Egyptian imbroglio Lord Randolph was emphatically opposed to almost every step taken by the government. He declared that the suppression of Arabi Pasha’s rebellion was an error, and the restoration of the khedive’s authority a crime. He called Mr Gladstone the “Moloch of Midlothian,” for whom torrents of blood had been shed in Africa. He was equally severe on the domestic policy of the administration, and was particularly bitter in his criticism of the Kilmainham treaty and therapprochementbetween the Gladstonians and the Parnellites. It is true that for some time before the fall of the Liberals in 1885 he had considerably modified his attitude towards the Irish question, and was himself cultivating friendly relations with the Home Rule members, and even obtained from them the assistance of the Irish vote in the English constituencies in the general election. By this time he had definitely formulated the policy of progressive Conservatism which was known as “Tory democracy.” He declared that the Conservatives ought to adopt, rather than oppose, reforms of a popular character, and to challenge the claims of the Liberals to pose as the champions of the masses. His views were to a large extent accepted by the official Conservative leaders in the treatment of the Gladstonian Franchise Bill of 1884. Lord Randolph insisted that the principle of the bill should be accepted by the opposition, and that resistance should be focused upon the refusal of the government to combine with it a scheme of redistribution. The prominent, and on the whole judicious and successful, part he played in the debates on these questions, still further increased his influence with the rank and file of the Conservatives in the constituencies. At the same time he was actively spreading the gospel of democratic Toryism in a series of platform campaigns. In 1883 and 1884 he invaded the Radical stronghold of Birmingham itself, and in the latter year took part in a Conservative garden party at Aston Manor, at which his opponents paid him the compliment of raising a serious riot. He gave constant attention to the party organization, which had fallen into considerable disorder after 1880, and was an active promoter of the Primrose League, which owed its origin to the happy inspiration of one of his own “fourth party” colleagues.

In 1884 the struggle between stationary and progressive Toryism came to a head, and terminated in favour of the latter. At the conference of the Central Union of Conservative Associations, Lord Randolph was nominated chairman, notwithstanding the strenuous opposition of the parliamentary leaders of the party. The split was averted by Lord Randolph’s voluntary resignation; but the episode had confirmed his title to a leading place in the Tory ranks. It was further strengthened by the prominent part he played in the events immediately preceding the fall of the Liberal government in 1885; and when Mr Childers’s budget resolutions were defeated by the Conservatives, aided by about half the Parnellites, Lord Randolph Churchill’s admirers were justified in proclaiming him to have been the “organizer of victory.” His services were, at any rate, far too important to be refused recognition; and in Lord Salisbury’s cabinet of 1885 he was appointed to no less an office than that of secretary of state for India. During the few months of his tenure of this great post the young free-lance of Tory democracy surprised the permanent officials and his own friends by the assiduity with which he attended to his departmental duties and the rapidity with which he mastered the complicated questions of Indian administration. In the autumn election of 1885 he contested Central Birmingham against Mr Bright, and though defeated here, was at the same time returned by a very large majority for South Paddington. In the contest which arose over Mr Gladstone’s Home Rule scheme, both in and out of parliament, Lord Randolph again bore a conspicuous part, and in the electioneering campaign his activity was only second to that of some of the Liberal Unionists, the marquess of Hartington, Mr Goschen and Mr Chamberlain. He was now the recognized Conservative champion in the Lower Chamber, and when the second Salisbury administration was formed after the general election of 1886 he became chancellor of the exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. His management of the House was on the whole successful, and was marked by tact, discretion and temper. But he had never really reconciled himself with some of his colleagues, and there was a good deal of friction in his relations with them, which ended with his sudden resignation on the 20th of December 1886. Various motives influenced him in taking this surprising step; but the only ostensible cause was that put forward in his letter to Lord Salisbury, which was read in the House of Commons on 27th January. In this document he stated that his resignation was due to his inability, as chancellor of the exchequer, to concurin the demands made on the treasury by the ministers at the head of the naval and military establishments. It was commonly supposed that he expected his resignation to be followed by the unconditional surrender of the cabinet, and his restoration to office on his own terms. The sequel, however, was entirely different. The cabinet was reconstructed with Mr Goschen as chancellor of the exchequer (Lord Randolph had “forgotten Goschen,” as he is said to have remarked), and Churchill’s own career as a Conservative chief was practically closed.

He continued, for some years longer, to take a considerable share in the proceedings of parliament, giving a general, though decidedly independent, support to the Unionist administration. On the Irish question he was a very candid critic of Mr Balfour’s measures, and one of his later speeches, which recalled the acrimonious violence of his earlier period, was that which he delivered in 1890 on the report of the Parnell commission. He also fulfilled the promise made on his resignation by occasionally advocating the principles of economy and retrenchment in the debates on the naval and military estimates. In April 1889, on the death of Mr Bright, he was asked to come forward as a candidate for the vacant seat in Birmingham, and the result was a rather angry controversy with Mr Chamberlain, terminating in the so-called “Birmingham compact” for the division of representation of the Midland capital between Liberal Unionists and Conservatives. But his health was already precarious, and this, combined with the anomaly of his position, induced him to relax his devotion to parliament during the later years of the Salisbury administration. He bestowed much attention on society, travel and sport. He was an ardent supporter of the turf, and in 1889 he won the Oaks with a mare named the Abbesse de Jouarre. In 1891 he went to South Africa, in search both of health and relaxation. He travelled for some months through Cape Colony, the Transvaal and Rhodesia, making notes on the politics and economics of the countries, shooting lions, and recording his impressions in letters to a London newspaper, which were afterwards republished under the title ofMen, Mines and Animals in South Africa. He returned with renewed energy, and in the general election of 1892 once more flung himself, with his old vigour, into the strife of parties. His seat at South Paddington was uncontested; but he was active on the platform, and when parliament met he returned to the opposition front bench, and again took a leading part in debate, attacking Mr Gladstone’s second Home Rule Bill with especial energy. But it was soon apparent that his powers were undermined by the inroads of disease. As the session of 1893 wore on his speeches lost their old effectiveness, and in 1894 he was listened to not so much with interest as with pity. His last speech in the House was delivered in the debate on Uganda in June 1894, and was a painful failure. He was, in fact, dying of general paralysis. A journey round the world was undertaken as a forlorn hope. Lord Randolph started in the autumn of 1894, accompanied by his wife, but the malady made so much progress that he was brought back in haste from Cairo. He reached England shortly before Christmas and died in London on the 24th of January 1895.

Lord Randolph Churchill married, in January 1874, Jennie, daughter of Mr Leonard Jerome of New York, U.S.A., by whom he had two sons. In 1900 Lady Randolph Churchill married Mr G. Cornwallis-West.

His elder son,Winston Churchill(1874- ), was educated at Harrow, and after serving for a few years in the army and acting as a special correspondent in the South African War (being taken prisoner by the Boers, Nov. 15, 1899, but escaping on Dec. 12), was elected Unionist member of parliament for Oldham in October 1900. As the son of his father, his political future excited much interest. His views, however, as to the policy of the Conservative party gradually changed, and having during 1904-1905 taken an active part in assisting the Liberal party in parliament, he stood for N.W. Manchester at the general election (1906) and was triumphantly returned as a Liberal and free-trader. He was made under-secretary for the colonies in the new Liberal government. In this position he became as conspicuous in parliament as he had already become on the platform as a brilliant and aggressive orator, and no politician of the day attracted more interest or excited more controversy. He was promoted to cabinet rank as president of the Board of Trade in Mr Asquith’s government in April (1908), but was defeated at the consequent by-election in Manchester after a contest which aroused the keenest excitement. He was then returned for Dundee, and later in the year married Miss Clementine Hozier.

An interesting and authoritative biography of Lord Randolph, by his son Winston (who had already won his spurs as a writer in hisRiver War, 1899, and other books on his military experiences), appeared in 1906; and a brief and intimate appreciation by Lord Rosebery, inspired by this biography, was published a few months later. Lord Randolph’s earlier speeches were edited, with an introduction and notes, by Louis Jennings (2 vols., London, 1889). See also T.H.S. Escott,Randolph Spencer Churchill(1895); H.W. Lucy,Diary of Two Parliaments(1892); and Mrs Cornwallis-West,The Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill(i.e.of the author) (1908).

(S. J. L.)

CHURCHILL(MissinnippiorEnglish), the name of a river of the province of Saskatchewan and district of Keewatin, Canada. It rises in La Loche (or Methy) lake, a small lake in 56° 30′ N. and 109° 30′ W., at an altitude of 1577 ft. above the sea, and flows E.N.E. to Hudson’s Bay, passing through a number of lake expansions. Its principal tributaries are the Beaver (350 m. long), Sandy and Reindeer rivers. Between Frog and Methy portages (480 m.) it formed part of the oldvoyageurroute to the Peace, Athabasca, and Mackenzie. It is still navigated by canoes, but has many rapids. Its principal affluent, the Reindeer, discharges the waters of Reindeer Lake (1150 ft. above the sea, with an area of 2490 sq. m.) and Wollaston Lake (altitude, 1300 ft). The Churchill is 925 m. long. Fort Churchill, at its mouth, is the best harbour in the southern portion of Hudson’s Bay. The portage of La Loche (or Methy), 12½ m. in length, connects its head waters with the Clearwater river, a tributary of the Athabasca, draining into the Arctic Ocean.

CHURCHING OF WOMEN, the Christian ceremony of thanksgiving on the part of mothers shortly after the birth of their children. It no doubt originated in the Mosaic regulation as to purification (Lev. xii. 6). In ancient times the ceremony was usual but not obligatory in England. In the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches to-day it is imperative. The custom is first mentioned in the pseudo-Nicene Arabic canons. No ancient form of service exists, and that which figures in the English prayer-book of to-day dates only from the middle ages. Custom differs, but the usual date of churching was the fortieth day after confinement, in accordance with the Biblical date of the presentment of the Virgin Mary and the Child Jesus at the Temple. It was formerly regarded as unlucky for a woman to leave her house to go out at all after confinement till she went to be churched. It was not unusual for the churching service to be said in private houses. In Herefordshire it was not considered proper for the husband to appear in church at the service, or at all events in the same pew. In some parishes there was a special pew known as “the churching seat.” The words in the rubric requiring the woman to come “decently apparelled” refer to the times when it was thought unbecoming for a woman to come to the service with the elaborate head-dress then the fashion. A veil was usually worn, and in some parishes this was provided by the church, for an inventory of goods belonging to St Benet’s, Gracechurch Street, in 1560, includes “A churching cloth, fringed, white damask.”

The “convenient place,” which, according to the rubric, the woman must occupy, was in pre-Reformation times the church-door. In the first prayer-book of Edward VI., she was to be “nigh unto the quire door.” In the second of his books, she was to be “nigh unto the place where the Table standeth.” Bishop Wren’s orders for the diocese of Norwich in 1636 are “That women to be churched come and kneel at a side near the Communion Table without the rail, being veiled according to custom, and not covered with a hat.” In Devonshire churching was sometimes called “being uprose.” Churchings were formerly registered in some parishes. In pre-Reformation days it was the custom in England for women to carry lighted tapers whenbeing churched, in allusion to the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin (February 2nd), the day chosen by the Roman Catholic church for the blessing of the candles for the whole year (see CANDLEMAS). At her churching a woman was expected to make some offering to the church, such as the chrisom or alb thrown over the child at christening.

CHURCH RATE, the name of a tax formerly levied in each parish in England and Ireland for the benefit of the parish church. Out of these rates were defrayed the expenses of carrying on divine service, repairing the fabric of the church, and paying the salaries of the officials connected with it. The church rates were made by the churchwardens, together with the parishioners duly assembled after proper notice in the vestry or the church. The rates thus made were recoverable in the ecclesiastical court, or, if the arrears did not exceed £10 and no questions were raised as to the legal liability, before two justices of the peace. Any payment not strictly recognized by law made out of the rate destroyed its validity. The church rate was a personal charge imposed on the occupier of land or of a house in the parish, and, though it was compulsory, much difficulty was found in effectually applying the compulsion. This was especially so in the case of Nonconformists, who had conscientious objections to supporting the Established Church; and in Ireland, where the population was preponderatingly Roman Catholic, the grievance was specially felt and resented. The agitation against church rates led in 1868 to the passing of the Compulsory Church Rates Abolition Act. By this act church rates are no longer compulsory on the person rated, but are merely voluntary, and those who are not willing to pay them are excluded from inquiring into, objecting to, or voting in respect of their expenditure (s. 8).

CHURCHWARDEN, in England, the guardian or keeper of a church, and representative of the body of the parish. The name is derived from the original duty attached to the office,—that of the custody or guardianship of the fabric and furniture of the church,—which dates from the 14th century, when the responsibility of providing for the repairs of the nave, and of furnishing the utensils for divine service, was settled on the parishioners. Churchwardens are always lay persons, and as they may, like “artificial persons,” hold goods and chattels and bring actions for them, they are recognized in law as quasi-corporations. Resident householders of a parish are those primarily eligible as churchwardens, but non-resident householders who are habitually occupiers are also eligible, while there are a few classes of persons who are either ineligible or exempted. The appointment of churchwardens is regulated by the 89th canon, which requires that the churchwardens shall be chosen by the joint consent of the ministers and parishioners, if it may be; but if they cannot agree upon such a choice, then the minister is to choose one, and the parishioners another. If, however, there is any special custom of the place, the custom prevails, and the most common custom is for the minister to appoint one, and the parishioners another, and this has been established by English statute, in the case of new parishes, by the Church Building and New Parishes Acts 1818-1884. There are other special customs recognized in various localities,e.g.in some of the larger parishes in the north of England a churchwarden is chosen for each township of the parish; in the old ecclesiastical parishes of London both churchwardens are chosen by the parishioners; in some cases they are appointed by the select vestry, or by the lord of the manor, and in a few exceptional cases are chosen by the outgoing churchwardens.

In general, churchwardens are appointed in Easter week, usually Easter Monday or Easter Tuesday, but in new parishes the first appointment must be within twenty-one days after the consecration of the church, or two calendar months after the formation of the parish, subsequent appointments taking place at the usual time for the appointment of parish officers. Each churchwarden after election subscribes before the ordinary a declaration that he will execute his office faithfully.

The duties of churchwardens comprise the provision of necessaries for divine service, so far as the church funds or voluntary subscriptions permit, the collecting the offertory of the congregation, the keeping of order during the divine service, and the giving of offenders into custody; the assignment of seats to parishioners; the guardianship of the movable goods of the church; the preservation and repair of the church and churchyard, the fabric and the fixtures; and the presentment of offences against ecclesiastical law.

In the episcopal church of the United States churchwardens discharge much the same duties as those performed by the English officials; their duties, however, are regulated by canons of the diocese, not by canons general. In the United States, too, the usual practice is for the parishes to elect both the churchwardens.

See Prideaux’sChurchwarden’s Guide(16th ed., London, 1895); Steer’sParish Law(6th ed., London, 1899); Blunt’sBook of Church Law(7th ed., London, 1894).

CHURCHYARD, THOMAS(c. 1520-1604), English author, was born at Shrewsbury about 1520, the son of a farmer. He received a good education, and, having speedily dissipated at court the money with which his father provided him, he entered the household of Henry Howard, earl of Surrey. There he remained for four years, learning something of the art of poetry from his patron; some of the poems he contributed later (1557) toSonges and Sonettesmay well date from this early period. In 1541 he began his career as a soldier of fortune, being, he said, “pressed into the service.” He fought his way through nearly every campaign in Scotland and the Low Countries for thirty years. He served under the emperor Charles V. in Flanders in 1542, returning to England after the peace of Crépy (1544). In the Scottish campaign of 1547 he was present at the barren victory of Pinkie, and in the next year was taken prisoner at Saint Monance, but aided by his persuasive tongue he escaped to the English garrison at Lauder, where he was once more besieged, only returning to England on the conclusion of peace in 1550. A broadside entitledDavy Dycars Dreame, a short and seemingly alliterative poem in the manner of Piers Plowman, brought him into trouble with the privy council, but he was dismissed with a reprimand. This tract was the starting-point of a controversy between Churchyard and a certain Thomas Camel. The whole of the “flyting” was reprinted in 1560 asThe Contention betwixte Churchyard and Camell.

In 1550 he went to Ireland to serve the lord deputy, Sir Anthony St Leger, who had been sent to pacify the country. Here Churchyard enriched himself at the expense, it is to be feared, of the unhappy Irish; but in 1552 he was in England again, trying vainly to secure a fortune by marriage with a rich widow. After this failure he departed once more to the wars to the siege of Metz (1552), and “trailed a pike” in the emperor’s army, until he joined the forces under William, Lord Grey of Wilton, with whom he says he served eight years. Grey was in charge of the fortress of Gaines, which was besieged by the duke of Guise in 1558. Churchyard arranged the terms of surrender, and was sent with his chief to Paris as a prisoner. He was not released at the peace of Cateau Cambrésis for lack of money to pay his ransom, but he was finally set free on giving his bond for the amount, an engagement which he repudiated as soon as he was safely in England. He is not to be identified with the T.C. who wrote for theMirror for Magistrates(ed. 1559), “How the Lord Mowbray ... was banished ... and after died miserablie in exile,” which is the work of Thomas Chaloner, but “Shore’s Wife,” his most popular poem, appeared in the 1563 edition of the same work, and to that of 1587 he contributed the “Tragedie of Thomas Wolsey.” These are plain manly compositions in the seven-lined Chaucerian stanza. Repeated petitions to the queen for assistance produced at first fair words, and then no answer at all. He therefore returned to active service under Lord Grey, who was in command of an English army sent (1560) to help the Scottish rebels, and in 1564 he served in Ireland under Sir Henry Sidney. The religious disturbances in the Netherlands attracted him to Antwerp, where as the agent of William of Orange he allowed the insurgents to place him at their head, and was able to save much property from destruction. This action made him so hated by the mob thathe had to fly for his life in the disguise of a priest. In the next year he was sent by the earl of Oxford to serve definitely under the prince of Orange. After a year’s service he obtained leave to return to England, and after many adventures and narrow escapes in a journey through hostile territory he embarked for Guernsey, and thence for England. His patron, Lord Oxford, disowned him, and the poet, whose health was failing, retired to Bath. He appears to have made a very unhappy marriage at this time, and returned to the Low Countries. Falling into the hands of the Spaniards he was recognized as having had a hand in the Antwerp disturbance, and was under sentence to be executed as a spy when he was saved by the intervention of a noble lady. This experience did not deter him from joining in the defence of Zutphen in 1572, but this was his last campaign, and the troubles of the remaining years of his life were chiefly domestic.

Churchyard was employed to devise a pageant for the queen’s reception at Bristol in 1574, and again at Norwich in 1578. He had published in 1575The firste parte of Churchyarde’s Chippes, the modest title which he gives to his works. No second part appeared, but there was a much enlarged edition in 1578. A passage inChurchyarde’s Choise(1579) gave offence to Elizabeth, and the author fled to Scotland, where he remained for three years. He was only restored to favour about 1584, and in 1593 he received a small pension from the queen. The affectionate esteem with which he was regarded by the younger Elizabethan writers is expressed by Thomas Nashe, who says (Foure Letters Confuted) that Churchyard’s aged muse might well be “grandmother to our grandiloquentest poets at this present.” Francis Meres (Palladis Tamia, 1598) mentions him in conjunction with many great names among “the most passionate, among us, to bewail and bemoan the perplexities of love.” Spenser, in “Colin Clout’s come home again,” calls him with a spice of raillery “old Palaemon” who “sung so long until quite hoarse he grew.” His writings, with the exception of his contributions to theMirror for Magistrates, are chiefly autobiographical in character or deal with the wars in which he had a share. They are very rare, and have never been completely reprinted. Churchyard lived right through Elizabeth’s reign, and was buried in St Margaret’s church, Westminster, on the 4th of April 1604.

The extant works of Churchyard, exclusive of commendatory and occasional verses, include:—A lamentable and pitifull Description of the wofull warres in Flanders(1578);A general rehearsall of warres, called Churchyard’s Choise(1579), really a completion of theChippes, and containing, like it, a number of detached pieces;A light Bondel of livelie Discourses, called Churchyardes Charge(1580);The Worthines of Wales(1587), a valuable antiquarian work in prose and verse, anticipating Michael Drayton;Churchyard’s Challenge(1593);A Musicall Consort of Heavenly harmonie ... called Churchyards Charitie(1595);A True Discourse Historicall, of the succeeding Governors in the Netherlands(1602).The chief authority for Churchyard’s biography is his own “Tragicall Discourse of the unhappy man’s life” (Churchyardes Chippes). George Chalmers published (1817) a selection from his works relating to Scotland, for which he wrote a useful life. See also an edition of theChippes(ed. J.P. Collier, 1870), of theWorthines of Wales(Spenser Soc. 1876), and a notice of Churchyard by H.W. Adnitt (Transactionsof the Shropshire Archaeological and Nat. Hist. Soc., reprinted separately 1884).

The chief authority for Churchyard’s biography is his own “Tragicall Discourse of the unhappy man’s life” (Churchyardes Chippes). George Chalmers published (1817) a selection from his works relating to Scotland, for which he wrote a useful life. See also an edition of theChippes(ed. J.P. Collier, 1870), of theWorthines of Wales(Spenser Soc. 1876), and a notice of Churchyard by H.W. Adnitt (Transactionsof the Shropshire Archaeological and Nat. Hist. Soc., reprinted separately 1884).

CHURCHYARD, a piece of consecrated ground attached to a parochial church, and used as a burial place. It is distinguished from a cemetery (q.v.), which is also a place of burial, but is separate and apart from any parochial church. A cemetery in England is either the property of a private company, incorporated by special act of parliament, or of a local authority, and is subject to the Cemeteries Clauses Act 1847, incorporated in the Public Health Acts. The practice of burying in churches or churchyards is said to have been connected with the custom of praying for the dead, and it would appear that the earlier practice was burying in the church itself. In England, about the year 750, spaces of ground adjoining the churches were enclosed and appropriated to the burial of those who had been entitled to attend divine service in those churches.

The right to burial in the parish churchyard is a common law right, controlled in many points by the provisions of the law ecclesiastical. This double character is sufficient to explain the controversy which has so long raged round the subject of burials in England. Every man, according to the common law, has a right to be buried in his own churchyard, or, as it is sometimes put, in the churchyard of the parish where he dies. But the churchyard, as well as the church itself, is the freehold of the parson, who can in many respects deal with it as if it were a private estate. A statute of Edward I. (35, st. 2) speaks of the churchyard as the soil of the church, and the trees growing in the churchyard “as amongst the goods of the church, the which laymen have no authority to dispose,” and prohibits “the parsons from cutting down such trees unless required for repairs.” Notwithstanding the consecration of the church and churchyard and the fact that they are the parson’s freehold, a right of way may be claimed through them by prescription. The right to burial may be subject to the payment of a fee to the incumbent, if such has been the immemorial custom of the parish, but not otherwise. The spirit of the ancient canons regarded such burial fees as of a simoniacal complexion, inasmuch as the consecrated grounds were among theres sacrae—a feeling which Lord Stowell says disappeared after the Reformation. No person can be buried in a church without the consent of the incumbent, except when the owner of a manor-house prescribes for a burying-place within the church as belonging to the manor-house. In the case ofRexv.Taylorit was held that an information was grantable against a person for opposing the burial of a parishioner; but the court would not interpose as to the person’s refusal to read the burial service because he never was baptized—that being matter for the ecclesiastical court. Strangers (or persons not dying in the parish) should not be buried, it appears, without the consent of the parishioners or churchwardens, “whose parochial right of burial is invaded thereby.”

In Scotland the obligation of providing and maintaining the churchyard rests on the heritors of the parish. The guardianship of the churchyard belongs to the heritors and also to the kirk-session, either by delegation from the heritors, or in right of its ecclesiastical character. The right of burial appears to be strictly limited to parishioners, although an opinion has been expressed that any person dying in the parish has a right to be buried in the churchyard. The parishioners have no power of management. The presbytery may interfere to compel the heritors to provide due accommodation, but has no further jurisdiction. It is the duty of the heritors to allocate the churchyard. The Scottish law hesitates to attach the ordinary incidents of real property to the churchyard, while English law treats the ground as the parson’s freehold. It would be difficult to say who in Scotland is the legal owner of the soil. Various opinions appear to prevail,e.g.as to grass growing on the surface and minerals found beneath. The difficulty as to religious services does not exist. On the other hand, the religious character of the ground is hostile to many of the legal rights recognized by the English law.

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